Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman and Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon have been vehemently and publicly anti-playoff. Brandon told ESPN.com there’s no fair way to select four teams. Perlman told SI.com last month he sees no benefits to a playoff, but he also told Omaha.com in December that officials could “convince” him otherwise.

This could be merely a “wheels within wheels” negotiating ploy, admittedly (“Guys, I’d love to abandon semi-final games on campus, but I don’t have the votes back home for that.”), but I have a hard time believing that Delany likes having a public perception that he’s not totally in control.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of work left to do between now and June 20, when the conference commissioners meet again to hammer things out.

It’s nice to know that commissioners and others are onto Delaney from the gitgo and not allowing him to use THe Rose Bowl as a negotiation ploy.

The thorny problem of choosing has raised it’s ugly head early to the chagrin of all involved. It is the reason that I maintain we have to go to 8 teams as champions from bowl games to have a playoff. The “fight for fourth” will drown out anyone wanting to choose the 4 teams instead of playing for it. Think the “committee(?)” members will find their way before everyone realizes they will choose AGAINST any second team in the SEC in that playoff? Think again. Think that it won’t settle into fans’s minds that this will be a quadruple-hyped screwing that can only be settled by letting teams play for the 4 positions? Think again.

By the time all the horror stories are published about those who were in the choosing (computers, Joe the Plumber, etc.) we unknowingly and blindly went along with for years, all alums/fans will have a bellyful and cry out for a playoff instead of an “extended choosing”. Something has to give and this would be a fine time to jump in and make ourselves known. Hell, we are inventing all ingredients necessary for a “slippery slope” that, for some odd reason, everyone doesn’t go out and embrace because its “Baaaaadd(?)”.

Why do I feel like “Oracle Jones” , the character in “Paint Your Wagons” who , after sufficient plying with whiskey, conjures up the vision of how the miners can together save the whiskey-delivering wagon train that’s being threatened by the Indians? The miners knew they would have a bad winter without the solace of booze. Why don’t we just shortcut the angst and the bad winters and just go straight to a playoff that will, in the end, be sought after all is said and done?

Because of the knuckleheads in the Big 10 and Pac 12, we will have some issues. Also, the other conferences are not even 2,3,4 etc right now, maybe like 3,4,7,8 etc. Maybe they use the BCS poll and come up with the top four teams, home and home and do a NC game all to itself. It should be conference champs or runner ups too on some level, but is the ACC or Big East champ on par with the SEC runner up? Not really? This next step will take several years to work through until one day they do away with the conference championship games and do an 8 game playoff and make it home and home except for the championship game. The major bowls would hang at that point for the rest of the top 25 teams, but after that, you get to stay home. Thank god bowls won’t be a reward for mediocrity in a couple years.

Quote Of The Day

“Being a student at Georgia and playing ball, I’ve definitely grown, widened my horizons and experienced things I never thought I would. I feel like I’ve grown on and off the field, and the university prepared me for that. I’ve done some awesome things and met some awesome people. I’ll definitely be back to finish my schoolwork, because that was a big priority for me and my family and weighed heavily on my decision. I know football won’t last forever. It’ll be great to come back and get that degree, so I can tell my kids about it one day.” — Roquan Smith, AJ-C, 3/7/18